Why I choose HostGator for shared web hosting services.

I have watched HostGator grow from a few hundred customers to over 100,000 customers. Brent Oxley, founder of HostGator, started the company from his dorm room back in 2002 while attending a Florida community college. Oxley says he repeatedly had to leave business class to answer support tickets, support emails, and answer support calls. After attending school for one year, Oxley decided that in order to take his business to the next level, it was best to quit school and focus exclusively on building HostGator.

Seven years and a multi-million dollar complex later, Oxley now has a team of more than 175 HostGator staff members holding the fort in Houston, Texas. Oxley’s attention to helping customers start their presence on the Internet shows in his innovative shared web hosting plans designed exclusively for personal, intermediate, and business customers.

HostGator tops the chart when it comes to advertising. If you have been surfing forums, directories, and online magazines, you most likely have come across an advertisement for HostGator. Oxley spends thousands of dollars a month on advertising to get the word out that HostGator is top-notch when it comes to serving as a shared web hosting provider.

Additionally, Oxley has built a team of first response support technicians, all located on site in Houston, Texas. Oxley says in-house support increases support response times and the quality is significantly better than if they chose to outsource to a 3rd party support company. The company continues to grow by adding thousands of new customers a month at an unprecedented rate. HostGator is one of my top choices for shared web hosting services.

Shared web hosting is where your website is hosted on one server with anywhere from 1 to 100 other websites. Shared web hosting accounts are limited in features, but are generally ideal for people just getting started in web hosting. For example, with a shared web hosting account, you have limited control over your web hosting account. Limited control is not necessarily a bad thing. Most shared web hosting companies give you plenty of control over over your web hosting account to publish a website, create email addresses, check email, upload files, create databases, and install software such as a blog, cms, forum, and so on.

Security and your shared web hosting account

There’s a difference in the security of your shared web hosting account and the security of your visitors purchasing items on your website or providing you with personal information. Since your web hosting account is residing on the same server with hundreds of other shared web hosting accounts, your website is more vulnerable than if you had your own virtual private server, virtual dedicated server, or managed dedicated server.

If you plan on offering products and services on your website or asking visitors for personal information, you need to purchase and install a 128-bit SSL security certificate.

Shared web hosting uptime

Since shared web hosting accounts reside on servers with hundreds of other web hosting accounts, they are more likely to be have service interruptions and possible downtime. If one of the web hosting accounts runs a script that utilizes 100% of the server’s resources, your website will go down. Your website will stay down and offline until the data center technicians finds the rogue account and stop the script from running. This process can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours. There may be additional harm caused by the rogue account that may take more time for the server to be available again.

See which shared web hosting provider I choose as a top pick in the daveonwebhosting.comWeb Hosting Directory.